The Provinces of the Roman Empire 3

The Provinces of the Roman Empire 3

To describe the struggle of the nations for the possession of the Indus

valley, and of the regions bordering on it, to the west and east, so

far as the wholly fragmentary tradition allows of a description at all,

is not the task of our survey; but the main lines of this struggle,

which constantly goes by the side of that waged for the Euphrates

valley, may the less be omitted in this connection, as our tradition

does not allow us to follow out in detail the circumstances of Iran to

the east in their influence on western relations, and it hence appears

necessary at least to realise for ourselves its outlines. Soon after

the death of Alexander the Great, the boundary between Iran and India

was drawn by the agreement of his marshal and coheir Seleucus with

Chandragupta, or in Greek Sandracottos, the founder of the empire of

the Indians. According to this the latter ruled not merely over the

Ganges-valley in all its extent and the whole north-west of India, but

in the region of the Indus, at least over a part of the upland valley

of what is now Cabul, further over Arachosia or Afghanistan, presumably

also over the waste and arid Gedrosia, the modern Beloochistan, as well

as over the delta and mouths of the Indus; the documents hewn in stone,

by which Chandragupta’s grandson, the orthodox Buddha-worshipper Asoka,

inculcated the general moral law on his subjects, have been found, as

in all this widely extended domain, so particularly in the region of

Peshawur.[15] The Hindoo Koosh, the Parapanisus of the ancients, and

its continuation to the east and west, thus separated with their mighty

chain--pierced only by few passes--Iran and India. But this agreement

did not long subsist.

 

[Sidenote: Bactro-Indian empire.]

 

In the earlier period of the Diadochi the Greek rulers of the kingdom

of Bactra, which took a mighty impulse on its breaking off from the

Seleucid state, crossed the frontier-mountains, brought a considerable

part of the Indus valley into their power, and perhaps established

themselves still farther inland in Hindostan, so that the centre of

gravity of this empire was shifted from western Iran to eastern India,

and Hellenism gave way to an Indian type. The kings of this empire were

called Indian, and bore subsequently non-Greek names; on the coins the

native Indian language and writing appear by the side, and instead, of

the Greek, just as in the Partho-Persian coinage the Pahlavi comes up

alongside of the Greek.

 

[Sidenote: Indo-Scythians.]

 

Then one nation more entered into the arena; the Scythians, or, as

they were called in Iran and India, the Sacae, broke off from their

ancestral settlements on the Jaxartes and crossed the mountains

southward. The Bactrian province came at least in great part into their

power, and at some time in the last century of the Roman republic

they must have established themselves in the modern Afghanistan and

Beloochistan. On that account in the early imperial period the coast

on both sides of the mouth of the Indus about Minnagara is called

Scythian, and in the interior the district of the Drangae lying to

the west of Candahar bears subsequently the name “land of the Sacae,”

Sacastane, the modern Seistân. This immigration of the Scythians into

the provinces of the Bactro-Indian empire doubtless restricted and

injured it, somewhat as the Roman empire was affected by the first

migrations of the Germans, but did not destroy it; under Vespasian

there still subsisted a probably independent Bactrian state.[16]

 

[Sidenote: Partho-Indian empire.]

 

Under the Julian and Claudian emperors the Parthians seem to have

been the leading power at the mouth of the Indus. A trustworthy

reporter from the Augustan age specifies that same Sacastane among

the Parthian provinces, and calls the king of the Saco-Scythians an

under-king of the Arsacids; as the last Parthian province towards

the east he designates Arachosia with the capital Alexandropolis,

probably Candahar. Soon afterwards, indeed, in Vespasian’s time,

Parthian princes rule in Minnagara. This, however, was for the empire

on the river Indus more a change of dynasty than an annexation proper

to the state of Ctesiphon. The Parthian prince Gondopharus, whom the

Christian legend connects with St. Thomas, the apostle of the Parthians

and Indians,[17] certainly ruled from Minnagara as far up as Peshawur

and Cabul; but these rulers use, like their superiors in the Indian

empire, the Indian language alongside of the Greek, and name themselves

great-kings like those of Ctesiphon; they appear to have been not the

less rivals to the Arsacids, on account of their belonging to the same

princely house.[18]

 

[Sidenote: Empire of the Sacae on the Indus.]

 

This Parthian dynasty was then followed in the Indian empire after a

short interval by what is designated in Indian tradition as that of the

Sacae or that of king Kanerku or Kanishka, which begins with A.D. 78

and subsisted at least down to the third century.[19] They belong to

the Scythians, whose immigration was formerly mentioned, and on their

coins the Scythian language takes the place of the Indian.[20] Thus in

the region of the Indus, after the Indians and the Hellenes, Parthians

and Scythians bore sway in the first three centuries of our era. But

even under the foreign dynasties a national Indian type of state was

established and held its ground, and opposed a not less permanent

barrier to the development of the Partho-Persian power in the East than

did the Roman state in the West.

 

[Sidenote: Asiatic Scythians.]

 

Towards the north and north-east Iran bordered with Turan. As the

western and southern shores of the Caspian Sea and the upper valleys

of the Oxus and Jaxartes offered an appropriate seat for civilisation,

so the steppe round the Sea of Aral and the extensive plain stretching

behind it belonged by right to the roving peoples. There were among

those nomads probably individual tribes kindred to the Iranians;

but these have no part in the Iranian civilisation, and it is this

element which determines the historical position of Iran, that it forms

the bulwark of the peoples of culture against those hordes, who, as

Scythians, Sacae, Huns, Mongols, Turks, appear to have no other destiny

in the world’s history than that of annihilating culture. Bactria, the

great bulwark of Iran against Turan, sufficed for this defence during a

considerable time under its Greek rulers in the epoch after Alexander;

but we have already mentioned that subsequently, although it did not

perish, it no longer availed to prevent the Scythians from pressing

onward towards the south. With the decay of the Bactrian power the same

task was transferred to the Arsacids. How far they responded to it it

is difficult to say. In the first period of the empire the great-kings

of Ctesiphon seem to have driven back the Scythians or to have brought

them into subjection in the northern provinces as well as to the south

of the Hindoo Koosh; they wrested from them again a portion of the

Bactrian territory. But it is doubtful what limits were here fixed, and

whether they were at all lasting. There is frequent mention of wars

between the Parthians and Scythians. The latter, here in the first

instance dwellers around the Sea of Aral, the forefathers of the modern

Turkomans, are regularly the aggressors, inasmuch as they partly by

crossing over the Caspian Sea invade the valleys of the Cyrus and the

Araxes, partly issuing from their steppes pillage the rich plains of

Hyrcania and the fertile oasis of Margiana (Merv). The border-regions

agreed to buy off the levy of arbitrary contributions by tributes,

which were regularly called up at fixed terms, just as at present the

Bedouins of Syria levy the _kubba_ from the farmers there. The Parthian

government thus, at least in the earlier imperial period, was as little

able as the Turkish government of the present day to secure here to the

peaceful subject the fruits of his toil, and to establish a durable

state of peace on the frontier. Even for the imperial power itself

these border-troubles remained an open sore; often they exercised an

influence on the wars of succession of the Arsacids as well as on their

disputes with Rome.

 

[Sidenote: The Romano-Parthian frontier regions.]

 

We have set forth in its due place how the attitude of the Parthians

to the Romans came to be shaped and the boundaries of the two great

powers to be established. While the Armenians had been rivals of

the Parthians, and the kingdom on the Araxes set itself to play the

part of great-king in anterior Asia, the Parthians had in general

maintained friendly relations with the Romans as the foes of their

foes. But, after the overthrow of Mithradates and Tigranes, the

Romans had, particularly through the arrangements made by Pompeius,

taken up a position which was hardly compatible with serious and

lasting peace between the two states. In the south Syria was now under

direct Roman rule, and the Roman legions kept guard on the margin

of the great desert which separates the lands of the coast from the

valley of the Euphrates. In the north Cappadocia and Armenia were

vassal-principalities of Rome. The tribes bordering on Armenia to the

northward, the Colchians, Iberians, Albanians, were thereby necessarily

withdrawn from Parthian influence, and were, at least according to the

Roman way of apprehending the matter, likewise Roman dependencies.

The lesser Media or Atropatene (Aderbijân), adjoining Armenia to the

south-east, and separated from it by the Araxes, had maintained,

despite the Seleucidae, its ancient native dynasty reaching back to

the time of the Achaemenids, and had even asserted its independence;

under the Arsacids the king of this region appears, according to

circumstances, as a vassal of the Parthians or as independent of

these by leaning on the Romans. The determining influence of Rome

consequently reached as far as the Caucasus and the western shore of

the Caspian Sea. This involved an overlapping of the limits indicated

by the national relations. The Hellenic nationality had doubtless so

far gained a footing on the south coast of the Black Sea and in the

interior of Cappadocia and Commagene, that here the Roman ascendency

found in it a base of support; but Armenia, even under the long years

of Roman rule, remained always a non-Greek land, knit to the Parthian

state with indestructible ties, by community of language and of faith,

the numerous intermarriages of people of rank, and similarity of dress

and of armour.[21] The Roman levy and the Roman taxation were never

extended to Armenia; at most the land defrayed the raising and the

maintenance of its own troops, and the provisioning of the Roman troops

stationed there. The Armenian merchants formed the channel for the

exchange of goods over the Caucasus with Scythia, over the Caspian Sea

with east Asia and China, down the Tigris with Babylonia and India,

towards the west with Cappadocia; nothing would have been more natural

than to include the politically dependent land in the domain of Roman

tribute and customs; yet this step was never taken.

 

The incongruity between the national and the political connections of

Armenia forms an essential element in the conflict--prolonged through

the whole imperial period--with its eastern neighbour. It was discerned

doubtless on the Roman side that annexation beyond the Euphrates was an

encroachment on the family-domain of Oriental nationality, and was not

any increase proper of power for Rome. But the ground or, if the phrase

be preferred, the excuse for the continuance of such encroachment lay

in the fact that the subsistence side by side of great states with

equal rights was incompatible with the system of Roman policy, we may

even say with the policy of antiquity in general. The Roman empire knew

as limit, in the strict sense, only the sea or a land-district unarmed.

To the weaker but yet warlike commonwealth of the Parthians the Romans

always grudged a position of power, and took away from it what these

in their turn could not forego; and therefore the relation between

Rome and Iran through the whole imperial period was one of perpetual

feud, interrupted only by armistices, concerning the left bank of the Euphrates.